31 Day Challenge - rainbow

I'm trying to continue branching out from just plain stamping, so today I made some stamping decals using Lily Allen plate 07. I then coloured it in using Essie's Twin Sweater Set (red), Face of Australia's Some Like It Hot (orange), OPI's I Just Can't Cope-a cabana (yellow), Sally Hansen's Just In Lime (green) and Brisk Blue, and China Glaze's Grape Pop (purple).

In hindsight, I wish I'd used brighter colours - the purple in particular is too dark. Ah well. I might try using some smaller decals later in the challenge instead of trying for a full nail look, as clean up was a bit of a pain.

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31 Day Challenge - metallic

I knew I wanted to do foils for today, and I decided to challenge myself and do some foil stamping! So I painted my nails gold, got my purple foil out, stamped my nails aaaand - nothing. It would not transfer. :'( 

I tried changing stamping polish, making a decal, nothing. And then I changed to a silver foil and bam, instant success. Lesson learned: purple foil from kmart should be avoided. (I think I got my silver foil from eBay.)

After all that, it was a pretty straightforward process. I painted my nails navy with Kester Black's Periwinkle, stamped a chevron design on using silver konad polish, and pressed the nail foil onto the still-damp stamping design to transfer it. Really pleased with how it turned out in the end!

This silver foil has holographic highlights - here's an out of focus shot to show it off!

And here you can see the foil after the pattern has transferred.

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31 Day Challenge: black & white

I love black and white - it's very striking - but it's also so unforgiving! No matter which white I use, I always seem to wind up doing 3 coats, and it takes a while to dry. Maybe I've just psyched myself out about white? Which white do you use?

I painted my nails white with Celestial Cosmetic's Snow Clouds (nice and easy to work with) then stamped over it using Cici and Sisi plate 06. I find that it's really hard to clean up my black Mundo de Unis stamping polish, so I used some liquid latex to paint around my fingers and form a peel-off barrier. This makes clean-up for much faster and more effective, but the smell is quite off-putting and you can be allergic to the latex. Happily for me I have a cold at the moment and can't smell anything. (Well, as happy as you can be with having a cold?!) 

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31 Day Challenge - violet

I've been making an effort to use items from my stash, so today I used two untrieds.

I painted my nails with a gorgeous purple from Essie called The Lace Is On. I decided to stamp it with a lace pattern, as a bit of a nod to the name, so I broke out Born Pretty stamping plate BP-02. (I really love peeling the blue film off stamping plates! So full of anticipation.)

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31 Day Challenge - blue

I had planned to do all-blue nails but the weather was so nice I couldn't resist adding some colour to the mix.

I painted my nails with Kleancolor's Sensual Lagoon (what a name!), a nice matte blue, then stamped the orange seahorses on with Born Pretty's BPL-025. I finished with a matte topcoat from OPI. I really like this look! Unfortunately I smudged one finger getting my camera out. Too impatient. :(

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31DC: Green apple nail kit from Academy of Color

Today I used a nail art kit I got from Kmart awhile ago (probably over a year... I'm trying to stop hoarding my nail art stuff and just use it! Does anyone else have that problem?)

This is the Acamedy of Color Apple Gloss kit. It comes with a green apple-scented polish and some apple "nail chips" - pretty cute.

The polish is indeed apple scented. It's still lingering even once dry and is a little annoying, but I don't like scented things in general so YMMV. It does smell reasonably well like apples. It dried to a satin matte finish and I used two coats - easy enough. I then used a wax pencil (from Born Pretty Store) to pick up the apple chips, which was very easy. Here's the finished look!

 However, I have quite curved nails, and the chips just don't sit right on my nails! Perhaps I should have curled the chips ahead of time. As it is, I'm glad I'm changing this mani tomorrow because I doubt it will last and it's a bit annoying to have them stick out. I'm a bit meh about the finished look.

Overall this kit is cute but I would recommend it more if your nails are flatter than mine. That said, it may have been discontinued now. If you do find it, I think it was around $4. So not bad value.

Finally, I was amused by the warning sign on the little vial of apple chips: "This is not food." Glad we cleared that up eh!

Hopefully I've got the InLinkz sorted now too. Blogging on my iPad is a little difficult sometimes; I'm not used to it.

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31 Day Challenge: Yellow

Here are my belated yellow nails - I was sick and did them a day late. The 3rd of September is National Flag Day in Australia, so I did some patriotic nails.

I painted them with OPI's The "It" Color, and then stamped using MoYou's Traveller 19 plate. I was a bit impatient with waiting for my nails to dry so I stamped a bit too early, and didn't press hard enough to fully transfer the full image. Still, I like how it turned out.